WizarDru
Adventurer
I wouldn't necessarily go that far. Where does Li'l Abner fall, for example? Once one of the most-read comics in history. Some are easy, like Terry and the Pirates or Pogo (though their content was not so easily pinned down). And I think Dick Tracy is a singularly bad example for 'representational', given the nature of his rogue's gallery. I mean, lookalikes of those characters were happily at home with Daffy Duck. A lot of comic strips tended to blend the styles. Certainly stuff like Little Orphan Annie and Thimble Theater (later Popeye) weren't solidly in one camp or the other.
I think you're point is valid, though: anime did have its origins of blending the two styles together. Of course, so did the legendary Carl Barks, as well as several European artists (which probably at least partly explains why anime caught on in parts of Europe much earlier than elsewhere).
I think it would be disingenuous to say that anime doesn't have its own set of tropes and stylistic flourishes that bind it together in the same way as, say, the French New Wave or 80s rock videos. What many anime enthusiasts feel, though is that many of the people claiming they hate anime really don't know what many of those tropes ARE and find that the people calling something 'anime' or 'video-gamey' are sometimes ignorant of the incorrect usage.
Put another way: there are many people who know next to nothing about D&D, other than the vague meta-textual details they hear on TV or read in magazines. So when you see a TV sitcom showing someone treating LARPing as if it's a pen-and-paper game or overhear someone talking about how only teenage nerds play D&D...it rankles. This is the same kind of reaction as the 'too anime' label. It feels imprecise to the level of parody or insult. Especially when, in many of the cases it's applied, 'anime' doesn't really apply. Hussar mentioned his art thread, which I remember. The biggest 'anime influence' I recall came from two brothers who drew in a module for Paizo's Dungeon, who were clearly anime fans and drew in that style. While a few showed some influence, most people traded pic for pic, blow for blow with examples from the original AD&D books and other sources, countering each 'see how it's anime' example given.
The only bearing of which on 'generational gaming' that I see is that some older gamers perceive an influence where, frankly, I don't see one. Anime and D&D share common ancestors and I wouldn't be surprised if there was cross-seeding on both parts (see Lodoss War, for one), but I'd wager that D&D has had more influence on anime than vice-versa.
From an author standpoint, I find that many of the gamers I know came to the fantasy genre AFTER playing D&D...but when many gamers my age came to Fantasy, D&D wasn't a GENRE UNTO ITSELF, yet. There weren't dozens of TSR/WotC books, yet. The Rankin-Bass Tolkien works, particularly the Hobbit, are more responsible for bringing me to D&D than anything else. I would argue that, to gamers of my age (40+), Tolkien was the single biggest attractor. In the late 60s/early 70s, Tolkien had a major resurgence in popularity...and two movies and a TV special didn't hurt.
But I found that many of the genre 'stars' were stuff we came to AFTER the fact, to broaden our interests, rather than before. And many of us found we couldn't find or didn't like a good chunk of it. (I tried Vance...but I Just. Couldn't. Do. It.) YMMV.
